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Herts takes SAP route

LogicaCMG lands £10.2m implementation deal with county council

Hertfordshire County Council is implementing a managed service from SAP in a five-year, £10.2m deal that will link into its customer service centre and website, cutting administration and redirecting resources to front line services.

Procurement, human resources management, payroll and financial management will be consolidated under the deal with LogicaCMG.

A 'big bang' implementation will see the system, which is currently being built, come into operation in April next year. The implementation and parallel running phases are due after Christmas.

Stuart Campbell, head of corporate information systems at the council, said the aim of the project was to integrate systems without the council having to develop its own bespoke system.

"Why reinvent the wheel? We aren't about doing things that aren't our core business," he said.

The system will facilitate self-service access to payment information for small business and suppliers, which should help the council redirect resources by reducing administration.

"In terms of benefits from integration this will be a vast improvement over what we had before. The key thing for the citizen will be the release of resources to front line services," Campbell added.

The SAP implementation will allow the council to link front- and back-end systems.

"We have had great success with our customer service centre and website and we will be able to integrate that with back office payment systems and take some of the effort out, " said Campbell.

"There are others that are taking a shallow view of e-government but for us it cuts across the organisation."

Hertfordshire County Council's chief executive, Caroline Tapster, added that the council looked to invest in technology and management processes "that have proven successful in the private sector".

The council is currently rated as the best performing of the 33 county councils in the country in terms of good social services, finances and e-government readiness, according to comprehensive performance assessment rankings from the Audit Commission.